Grown-ups fight heated battle as kids watch cartoons

MATT KEMPNER, Cox News Service

Published 5:30 am, Saturday, June 29, 2002

ATLANTA -- You know things are going to get ugly when little kids fight.

One of this summer's most animated battles is in movie theaters, and it pits a football-headed fourth grader named Arnold from Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold! against the Cartoon Network's kindergarten Powerpuff Girls.

On June 28, Nickelodeon rolled out Hey Arnold! The Movie in theaters. Five days later, Atlanta-based Cartoon Network releases The Powerpuff Girls Movie in theaters nationwide.

Now here's the grown-up picture: The real powers staging this cartoon confrontation are AOL Time Warner and Viacom, two media giants trying to attract more kids and other viewers.

There's millions of dollars at stake and not just at U.S. box offices.

Executives are hoping their movies will drive more kids to watch their TV networks, spark sales of DVDs and home videos, pack in crowds overseas and set kids scrambling to buy cartoon-themed book bags, T-shirts and other licensed gear.

"Both (networks) have these huge corporations behind them," says Rita Street, the publisher of Animation Magazine, an industry trade publication. "I think it will continue to be head-to-head."

It's only been in the last year or so that AOL's Cartoon Network has become a serious competitor to Viacom's Nickelodeon, a 23-year-old network that is the No. 1 draw for kids on ad-supported TV.

In the coming weeks the battlefield will shift as the two face off for the first time in movie theaters.

Cartoon Network's first movie foray stems from one of its most successful TV shows, The Powerpuff Girls, featuring Buttercup, Bubbles and Blossom -- little girls "whose mission in life alters between fighting crimes and winning at hopscotch," as the network says. Even without a movie, the show has spawned enough licensed merchandise to generate nearly $1 billion in retail sales, according to the network. Nickelodeon's latest movie is a spinoff of its animated show Hey Arnold!, which stars a boy who hangs with a motley group of characters.

"They both have built up a huge audience base from the TV series," says Street of Animation Magazine. "I think they are pretty evenly matched."

The Powerpuff Girls appear to have one advantage. "It has more of an adult underground crowd," Street says. "A lot of college students would go see it and wouldn't go see Hey Arnold!"

Cartoon Network officials, in fact, have set their sights on not just kids, but adults and teens. They also are trying to attract more girls, who actually make up a smaller percentage of the audience for Powerpuff Girls on TV than boys.

But movie ticket sales are only part of the potential payoff. Cartoon Network General Manager Jim Samples says he's hoping the movie will attract more viewers to the TV show. He's looking for a 10 percent ratings bump this summer.

"Our core business is cable and satellite television," Samples says. But he adds: "Theatricals are an important part of our future. ... It builds ratings and awareness of the core business."

An animated summer

Animated movies have been on a roll lately. Once an area dominated by Disney, rival moviemakers have pumped out a flood of new animated releases in recent years.

This year's offerings range from Disney's Lilo & Stitch to Nickelodeon's planned December release of TV spinoff The Wild Thornberrys. Also in theaters is Scooby-Doo, which AOL's Warner Bros. spun off from the TV series airing on Cartoon Network.

With so much animated fare competing to attract kids' eyes and parents' cash, some of the new movies are likely to come up short, says Joe Tracy, who publishes Digital Media FX, an online magazine. "Someone is going to suffer."

Nickelodeon already has proved it knows how to do movies. In 1998 it used its powerhouse Rugrats TV series to entice kids into theaters for The Rugrats Movie. It grossed more than $100 million in the United States alone. Since then it has released another Rugrats film.

And late last year the network tried a new strategy: It launched a movie -- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius -- before a spinoff TV series scheduled for September. More Nickelodeon movies are on the way.

"Cartoon Network is following in Nickelodeon's footsteps after seeing their tremendous success," Tracy says.

The networks are also taking a different approach from Disney: They are making movies more cheaply, Tracy says.

Cheaper cartoons

Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon already have characters to base the movies on, plus established fan bases. The networks also are putting less work into background scenes, employing fewer animators and showing audiences cruder drawings, according to Tracy.

The result, he says: Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon can get a movie made and distributed for about $20 million, compared with $60 million to $100 million for Disney films.

"Kids could care less how cheap it looks," Tracy says. "If it's funny, it doesn't matter to them."

Still, Cartoon Network says it is spending eight to 10 times more on the Powerpuff movie than it does on the TV series. Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon executives won't say how much money they expect the movies to make. But with big payoffs possible, they are eager to find other shows they can turn into movies.

New Line Cinema, another arm of AOL, recently announced plans to make a movie based on the Cartoon Network show Samurai Jack. And Nickelodeon plans to release a movie based on its hit show, Spongebob Squarepants, in 2004. There also are expectations for a movie combining the Rugrats and the Wild Thornberrys and another starring Jimmy Neutron.

Not every TV cartoon deserves life in the movies, cautions Street of Animation Magazine.

Characters have to have some depth and story lines have to be especially compelling at the movies, she says. "It's only a certain type of concept that can hold its own."